Barely Speaking a Word - Jan 5 2026

 

Barely Speaking a Word

Jan 5 2026



The last few days

I spent alone.

I read, puttered, thought.

Wrote a couple of poems

none of them good.

Spoke only to the dogs;

who are good listeners

no matter what I say,

may not obey

but at least don’t correct me.

They say solitude is torture.

But that’s locked in a spartan cell

where the lights burn ‘round the clock.

Or shipwrecked

on a south sea atoll

with no one but yourself,

drinking salt water 

and eating bugs.

Don’t prophets sojourn in the wilderness;

Jesus for 40 days

and Elijah the same,

the Buddha’s 6 years

of vagrant self-denial?

Aren’t vows of silence

isolation of another sort?

And haven’t wellness retreats

become a thing?

But then, what you miss;

speaking up

being seen

human touch.

And if it’s true

that we only exist in the eyes of others

then solitude is a kind of oblivion;

eventually, a sense of unreality overcomes

when you start to question

if you’re a figment

instead of really here.

And like those holy men

who emerge with commandments

manuscripts

and manifestos,

they expect some kind of wisdom

to come from it.

While I just rested my voice

and lost track of time.

Wrote about being alone,

a self-indulgent poem

that isn’t profound or insightful

won’t change anyone’s life.

But at least learned

that time went on without me,

and that without it

I did perfectly fine.

Enough of this

and my vocal cords 

will remain as smooth and full

as that adolescent man

who claims to be vegan

and is oddly proud

of his patchy peach-fuzz beard.

Who never shouted over the music

in smoke-filled party rooms,

drank hard liquor

or sung vulgar lyrics

in a bad punk band

until he and his buddies were hoarse.

So I will never sound old

like the worldly women and hard-living men

who spent their lives connected.

Instead, I’ll be like the lifers

who spent too much time

in solitary confinement

carving numbers into the wall,

and now, walk around bewildered

barely speaking a word. 

I spend way more time alone than most people. (I mean without human company; dogs don’t count!) So I can literally go days without speaking to another human being, even on the phone. Since I’ve always been an introvert and loner (although not the axe-wielding type, I hasten to add; the kind who do write manifestos, but then go on killing sprees!) I rarely feel lonely despite being alone. In fact, I need solitude. 

This poem began when I found myself once again noting how long it’s been since I spoke to anyone (even on the phone), accompanied by the wry observation that I may get old, but my voice sure won’t! And also how silly — even patronizing —  is the stereotyped parody of how old people talk:  no one sounds like that, even if they once did in recordings from the 1930s!

But as the poem evolved, it also ended up touching on my ambivalence toward all this alone time:  what I miss in a sheltered life that stays in its comfort zone; that keeps to its path of least resistance. 

(One last note:  can a punk band really be anything but bad? (Although considering that I’m a fan of Frank Sinatra, perhaps my music criticism doesn’t carry much weight!))